Sunday, October 20, 2013

Counting down... - Day 20

In 14 more days, I will officially be on vacation! I'm so excited that I can just burst.

I know this might sound odd but I'm using a big part of my vacation to work at home on projects that I never have time to complete. This is work that I actually want to do because I am getting rid of some furniture, sorting out my sewing room, and making a waist level cutting station and a proper design wall. No more bending over on this low table for hours of cutting need to make some quilts. I've been using the dining room table as a "design wall" for more years than I can stand at this point. It's something I've dreamed of doing for many years but now am taking the plunge.

Sunday's Sew Time

It took a lot longer that I thought it would but I finished my quilting on the table runner I mentioned in yesterday's post. I really love how it turned out and might just make another one for myself to keep.

(Echo quilting on this beast.)

Now, on to binding it!

Continuous Binding - My Nemesis

I spent some time today working on binding. I still haven't mastered the art of continuous binding so I wanted to practice before finishing up some bigger projects on the horizon. I made some little Halloween pot holders that would be the perfect size to work on this skill that seems to elude me. (I recently lost one of my favorite pot holders to a stove incident. I can laugh about it now but it really hurt.)

The rat's nest I kept getting when the fabric
got stuck in the feed dogs.

I kept getting it twisted up once I sewed it down.

After sewing and unpicking the same seam 3 times, I finally turned to Youtube for some sanity and found the most wonderful video. I've bookmarked this gem for future reference. The directions here were so amazing and simple. (I was almost to the desperate stage of just chucking the pot holders and ordering one of those fancy binding tools I've seen online for ten bucks.)

I ended up with two pot holders and a few hours of frustrating attempts to make the binding line up on the diagonal and lay flat the right way so I can sew it down. I do feel that I am getting the hang of it and am not so scared to do it again next weekend.

Hope your weekend was super fun and productive. Wishing you a great week ahead!